THE WORLD

THE WORLD; IN MEXICO, INTELLECTUALS DEFY THE STATE - BUT GET INVITED TO LUNCH

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: September 27, 1987

MEXICO CITY—
THE governing elite's traditional attitude toward Mexico's intelligentsia was probably best expressed by Porfirio Diaz, who ruled the country with an iron hand from 1876 to 1910. ''This rooster wants corn,'' the dictator would remark to his advisers whenever prominent intellectuals attacked him. He then would try to buy their allegiance by offering the dissenters Government sinecures.

Diaz's successors have followed a similar strategy of co-optation with remarkable success ever since. But under President Miguel de la Madrid, signs of strain have emerged in the symbiotic relationship between intellectuals and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as PRI. Writers, philosophers and artists have begun to speak out with unaccustomed vigor in every available forum on issues ranging from air pollution to fraudulent elections.

Like many of the other recent changes in Mexican society, this one emanates in large part from the economic turmoil that has shaken the country since 1982. Inflation has rocketed to record levels and real incomes have fallen by half. The crisis has raised doubts about the viability of a system overwhelmingly dominated by the PRI, which has won every presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial election since it came to power in 1929 at the end of the Mexican Revolution.

''This is a post-1982 phenomenon,'' said Enrique Krauze, a prominent historian and senior editor of the literary magazine Vuelta, in discussing the growing willingness of mainstream intellectuals to dissent from the system that has long sustained them. ''We are on ambiguous terrain now, in a period of transition. Many intellectuals have not been able to rid themselves of old ideas and relationships to power, but others are realizing that independence is better.''

Accusations of fraud in state elections in Chihuahua last year, in fact, sparked the most important manifestation of intellectual independence since Mr. de la Madrid took office in December 1982. Prominent writers and artists issued a letter of protest that angered and alarmed PRI leaders. ''It was the first time,'' said the writer Carlos Monsivais, ''that intellectuals of all the various ideological tendencies came together to take a common position in defense of democracy.''

As Mr. Monsivais suggests, intellectuals may be a less homogenous group than before and for that reason less easy to control. The ''generation of 1968,'' men and women now in their late 30's and early 40's whose political coming of age coincided with a Government massacre of several hundred protesters who were demanding an end to the PRI's domination of society, just before the 1968 Olympic Games here, have offered some of the most pointed criticisms of the status quo. Unlike some of their elders, they do not automatically view the state as the benevolent heir of the Mexican Revolution. The traditional left-wing monopoly on political thought here has also diminished slightly with the emergence of thinkers such as Gabriel Zaid, a businessman whose best-selling book, ''The Presidential Economy,'' challenges the long-espoused dogma of centralization.

Arguing that the Government is often unwilling and unable to respond to popular causes, the intellectuals have formed coalitions with other groups to press various causes, particularly environmental ones. Alliance With Lions Clubs

In early 1985, prominent artists, writers, scientists and others formed the Group of 100 to demand, among other things, action to reduce the heavy air pollution in Mexico City. They later joined with professional groups to protest what they said was the slow and inept response to the aftermath of the Mexico City earthquake in September 1985 and to assert that the Government had turned a blind eye to violations of construction codes in many buildings that were destroyed. Recently, the Group of 100 has emerged at the center of a combative coalition, which includes Lions Clubs, shrimp fishermen and ranchers, opposed to Mexico's first nuclear power plant, on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

''By raising questions about abuse of power, corruption and favoritism, we have established a direct linkage between politics and the ecology in Mexico,'' said the poet Homero Aridjis, head of the Group of 100 and a former ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland. ''But for people like us, the main problem is how to defend ourselves against the temptations and the invitations of the government. It is traditional for the intellectual to represent public opinion, but the system is always seeking ways to disarm any serious movement.''

The Mexican intelligentsia owes its privileged position to several factors, not the least of which is the vanity of politicians who view themselves as intellectuals, too. Addressing a poetry festival before leaving office in 1982, President Jose Lopez Portillo said he looked forward to his retirement, when he would be able to grow a beard and write and paint. The whiskers have not sprouted, but last month Mr. Lopez Portillo invited the country's artistic elite to his mansion for a book party to celebrate the publication of a screenplay he wrote about the Spanish conquest.